Rethinking the Architect Kemaleddin and his religious buildings in the context of architectural historiography

The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the narratives in architectural historiography about the I. National Architecture Movement, which was the main architectural movement during the last years of the Empire and the Early Republican Period, and Kemaleddin Bey, one of its pioneers, and to present an alternative historiography with a critical perspective away from the paradigms of traditional historiography. In this framework, considering that the period under examination is a period of transition, historical, economic and ideological changes were traced and it was aimed to scrutinize architecture and its multiple actors in this process. Within the scope of the study, mosques and mausoleums, which Kemaleddin Bey continued to produce throughout his professional life, are selected as a sample building group in order to trace the formal and representational changes from the Empire to the Republic. In order to expand the limited scope offered by stylistic narrative in architectural historiography and to create an alternative narrative form, an evaluation is presented through the structures Kemaleddin Bey built, as well as his designs, discourses and his criticisms that remain on paper. The topics and boundaries addressed in the thesis, which is designed to be an architectural historiography evaluation base, aim to point out the ambiguities and problematics in historiography around various concepts such as "modernism", "nationalism", "nation building".